Creating for the moment

Kassidi Hotrum seems much older than her 21 years. “When I was 12, my mother told me I was more like 40,” she said.

Perhaps it’s her mellow disposition or her fondness for old things like books, records, vintage furniture, and good old-fashioned conversation across tables.

“Progress and technology are tearing our world apart,” she said, “Music and art are computer generated and no one really talks face-to-face anymore. We’ve become distant and desolate.”

Called “absent attendance,” even at tables, heads are down, focusing on some gadget. Hotrum’s art reflects these notions as she beautifies what was, capturing it to serve as a reminder of the past in hopes of bringing it back or at least stop it from being lost completely.

A series of pieces that she is working on focus around cursive writing, an art form that is leaving schools. She found on old ledger where someone had gracefully written lists of things. She enlarged the sheets and is applying them to plaster and wood from old structures. She will then paint images on them from abstract to figurative. Her goal is to create 28 pieces, eventually moving on to another series of vintage findings. …